Technology|Silicon Valley's Artificial Intelligence Marathon Is On

May 19, 2016 By PUI-WING TAM Artificial intelligence. Chatbots. Messaging. Sound familiar? These were some of the themes that Google brought up at its annual developer conference on Wednesday. At the event, the Silicon Valley company introduced an Internet-connected speaker called Google Home that is powered by A.I. and a new messaging app called Allo, among other things. These are also some of the very same topics that have come up at developer conferences held by Microsoft and Facebook this year. In March, Microsoft spent time talking about A.I. and bots, which are the pieces of software that can be used to produce new methods of interaction with computers, like chat interfaces. A month later, Facebook said it was opening up its Messenger messaging app so developers could create chatbots…